I must confess, Melakon, I did go and read your reviews of the episodes I've already watched. We seem to be more or less in agreement regarding the quality of Season One. Also, your comment "Porthos takes one giant leak for all dogkind" really cracked me up.

Civilization:

Oh, this show. You have to ignore so many things to be able to enjoy it: science, continuity, common sense... My brain insists on pointing out the flaws while I'm watching, even when I don't want it to.

I'll say this, though. This episode worked well as an entertaining bit of nonsense. It didn't really have a point, but it was sort of fun to watch. In fact, it almost had the feel of a TOS episode. The Enterprise finds an alien civilization full of people who dress all olde-tymey and look almost exactly like humans, and the captain gets to make out with a medieval wench. Only in this case, Archer is a watered-down, aww-shucks version of Kirk. ("Whoopsie daisy, my translator is malfunctioning! Well, shoot... I guess I could always kiss her...") And then the Enterprise gets to save the town from an evil alien, played here by Bellick from Prison Break. Also, they find another underground facility. Hooray!

This was the first time that the subject of cultural contamination was brought up on this show. While the Vulcans have a strict policy of non-interference with pre-warp civilizations, humans have no such policy yet. This is a good policy. It's why the Vulcans didn't make First Contact with humans until Cochrane's warp flight. But instead, Archer just basically says, "We're not Vulcans, so suck it", and goes down to the planet anyway. The thing is, though, he doesn't learn anything. There are no repercussions from his interference, and he even gets to be a hero. You'd think, at the very least, this Riann woman would have been traumatized for life, but she's totally fine with this shocking revelation that she's just been visited by people from ANOTHER PLANET. But whatever.

And I've given up on trying to make any sort of sense out of the universal translator. I realize the whole concept of it requires a certain suspension of disbelief, but at this point, I'm just going to tell myself, "Stop thinking about it!!"

I liked the CGI effects, especially the battle scene with Enterprise and the Mallurians. (Why do I know that name? Was there ever any mention of Mallurians in TOS?) I thought the musical score was very nice. And I loved this little comment from Phlox: "Isn't it extraordinary? Thousands of sentient species in our little corner of the cosmos, each one discovering science in their own unique way." I like Phlox. His curiosity and enthusiasm are contagious.